MUMBAI: In a bizarre incident at Kurla, a snake returned to bite the same youth that it had bitten three days before, but only to get killed this time.
After three days of hospital stay due to snakebite, 21-year-old Atish Mistry was petrified to feel something move under his hand when he was lying on the floor and watching TV. “This time, I stood on my feet in a jiffy, and hit the snake hard with a rod that was lying nearby,’’ he said. “I killed it right there,’’ he said.
Soon after, the family made the slithery discovery that the snake was tucked somewhere in their sofa. “It must have been living inside the sofa for quite sometime,’’ he said.
The first time when he was bitten last week, Mistry was watching TV lying on the floor in the same position. He suddenly experienced a piercing pain in the middle finger of his right hand. After ignoring it for a while, he had to go to a doctor as the pain did not subside. The local doctor gave Mistry tetanus shots as he felt he must have been bitten by a rat.
But, as hours passed, his swollen hand became worse, and the pain more severe. Mistry then rushed to the Aryan group of hospitals in Kurla, where the doctors realised that it was a snakebite. “But, since the patient had not seen the snake, he refused to believe us,’’ said the on-duty doctor, Rajendra Nikam. “He said there was no way a snake could have bitten him inside his house,’’ Nikam said.
Looking at two tiny dots where the snake bit him, Nikam administered him anti-venom immediately. “His condition improved and he was discharged after three days,’’ he said. “The snake’s poison was spreading slowly, so he did not show many symptoms immediately after the bite,’’ said Nikam.
When Mistry managed to kill the 3.5 ft-long snake, he took it to the hospital. “He brought the dead snake in a plastic bag and showed it to us, saying that our treatment was right,’’ said Nikam. Mistry is doing well now, he added.